Empowering the Special Parents of Children with Special Needs

My apologies for the interruption in the information flow
from the Fascia Research course but things were too intense for the last few
days.

Wednesday – the get-together dinner and then I needed time
to prepare what was called a ‘Participant Presentation. I titled mine
“Myofascial Paradoxes in Cerebral Palsy” and, frankly, did not really know what
reaction to expect. Many of the hands-on practitioners such as osteopaths,
Rolfers etc. do work periodically with CP kids, and those who attended this
Fascia Research are among the leaders and innovators in their fields, so there
was always a possibility of professional ego ‘clashes’ etc.

I’ve seen this in the past – especially at the Cerebral Palsy
conference –some, say PTs, have a quick look at our comparison pictures, give
you a nod, but then would either start bragging about their own ‘amazing
results’ or would go along the lines: “It’s just an anecdote and fluke anyway…”
or “Look at the foot – it is still spastic” and so on, basically trying on a
‘judge’s robe’ of a “mainstream expert” towards the lowly “alternatives”.

Things were completely different with the Fascia Research
Course crowd. The moment I introduced and illustrated the concept of
‘Compressional Weakness’ – I had genuine focused attention, even though we were
at the end of extremely intense learning week, just hours before going home.
Seeing the pics like those:

Draw a respectful ‘Oh’ among the audience.I intentionally chose the examples with a young adult who has completed the skeletal growth to make sure there would not be any ambiguity about 'maybe it is just a spontaneous thing'...

It was a refreshing contrast to see that practitioners in
the audience were not “protecting territory” but were genuinely open to
unorthodox ideas – ready to embrace our much different outlook at Cerebral Palsy
and welcomed the move beyond the familiar ‘release the muscles’/ ‘stimulate the
brain’ mindset.

Another aspect that really drawn a lot of attention was the
realization of a sheer magnitude of work that is being delivered by you guys –
those 100s of hours per year of hands-on impacts that come from your daily
efforts. In ABR ‘world’ we all are kind of used to that – however, even for
most advanced practitioners – this is an unfamiliar territory. A typical frame
of reference for them is ‘the number of sessions’ – 10,20, rarely 30 or more
done by a professional, hence seeing the perspective of fascia transformations
emerging from a truly massive scale of work was quite a revelation for the
audience, commanding both nods of respect and the genuine interest in the
results.

Of course, time was limited and it’s next to impossible to
squeeze the entire ABR paradigm into a 20 min space (since there were few other
speakers after me) – but the response to our work was really encouraging…

I guess in any professional field there are only so many
people who are capable of realizing its’ limitations and who have the urge to
look beyond the standard scope of expertise.Unfortunately, the chances that your local healthcare professional
belongs to these inquisitive elite – are slim. Most likely, you’d face a person
who is fully contempt with existent borders of knowledge and enjoys viewing
oneself as an expert and authority. The only way to deal with them is to trump
them with higher authority.

In that respect, the growing influence of the Fascia
paradigms is a very positive trend. In the last 10 years the number of
publications specifically referencing to fascia has increased nearly ten-fold
and it is somewhat of a Cinderella story – from complete disregard (for
hundreds of years just being scraped away on the way to observe ‘the real
tissues’) to emerging ‘stardom’.

I have to admit that’s a pleasant ‘massage of my ego’ – things
that made me sound like a nutcase 10 years back now start making their way into
mainstream. But obviously, a lot more important are the improving perspectives
of recognition and support for all of you – the ‘everyday heroes’ doing the
hands-on work on your CP kids day-in day-out despite the hostile and supportive
environment of existent healthcare framework…

I am at home this week before going to Canada – so I’ll
definitely start processing and posting the previously promised ‘important points’ – by now there are way more
than initial 5 that I have outlined in the previous post.

Comments

Fascia Course -- positives abound

My apologies for the interruption in the information flow
from the Fascia Research course but things were too intense for the last few
days.

Wednesday – the get-together dinner and then I needed time
to prepare what was called a ‘Participant Presentation. I titled mine
“Myofascial Paradoxes in Cerebral Palsy” and, frankly, did not really know what
reaction to expect. Many of the hands-on practitioners such as osteopaths,
Rolfers etc. do work periodically with CP kids, and those who attended this
Fascia Research are among the leaders and innovators in their fields, so there
was always a possibility of professional ego ‘clashes’ etc.

I’ve seen this in the past – especially at the Cerebral Palsy
conference –some, say PTs, have a quick look at our comparison pictures, give
you a nod, but then would either start bragging about their own ‘amazing
results’ or would go along the lines: “It’s just an anecdote and fluke anyway…”
or “Look at the foot – it is still spastic” and so on, basically trying on a
‘judge’s robe’ of a “mainstream expert” towards the lowly “alternatives”.

Things were completely different with the Fascia Research
Course crowd. The moment I introduced and illustrated the concept of
‘Compressional Weakness’ – I had genuine focused attention, even though we were
at the end of extremely intense learning week, just hours before going home.
Seeing the pics like those: